Girls play for the love of the game

May 23 2010 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

And all research shows that girls’ teams are setting similarly positive examples in mixed leagues nationwide – and shaming boys’ teams into behaving better as a result.

Who’d have thought it – the fight against backchat being led by women?

If that sounds sexist to you, I’m afraid that some people are willing to write mixed football off as exactly that.

Those same people, depressingly, being women.

Never mind that the Belles will surely benefit enough from competing against better players (more sexism – sorry) to go on to bigger things when rules and regulations dictate they stick to playing their own (whoops, there I go again).

Never mind that if any of the lads they leave behind go all the way in the game, they will have those girls at least partly to thank for understanding its true meaning.

No, that doesn’t prevent academics like Professor Celia Brackenridge from claiming that girls’ “civilising influence” on the game “plays on traditional stereotypes . . . in ways which leave no room for transforming local gender relations, let alone disrupting the overall gender order of football . . .”

So what, you might well ask. So what, on every level.

But it’s Professor Brackenridge’s university, Brunel, which has been advising the Football Association on the future of girls’ football.

So although their main recommendation – to raise the maximum age in which girls can play in boys’ teams to 13 – smacks of common sense, you fear the issue is being driven by political correctness.

The Jarrow Belles don’t turn up every week to disrupt “gender order”, but to enjoy themselves.

And part of the reason they, and teams like them, are welcomed with open arms is because they are a break from the norm.

Vive la difference, as they say in Hebburn.